


iWTF

by WhiteKnightro



Category: iCarly
Genre: Seddie - Freeform, iOMG
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteKnightro/pseuds/WhiteKnightro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the iOMG episode of iCarly this piece examines the events from the perspective of Freddie Benson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Game

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the iCarly episode: "iOMG" It first appeared on the FanFiction site (and it's still there). This post is merely me experimenting with the Archive site.

iWTF

Chapter One: The Game

You are Fredward Richard Benson, and you are about to lose an arm wrestling match. Everyone in the room knows it, the outcome is expected. This is just like professional wrestling. The winner is known before either competitor steps in the ring. This is just a show.

What is not obvious and what you do not state is that you could beat your opponent. Her. Yes, you are about to throw a contest with a girl. Oh, not just any girl. Sam Puckett is known as a fierce competitor throughout the school, leaving a trail of broken thumbs, swollen, deep purple wounds and bruised egos. Physical violence is a hallmark of her treatment of others. She was the terror of the young beauty pageant circuit, suspended from competing on suspicion of shoving the ranking contestant down the stairs. When you were smaller Sam would routinely batter you into submission, and now at 16, even though you are taller, physically stronger from benches and preacher curls and shoulder presses, and can win a contest of brute strength, you will let her win, because that is the role you play in the game. 

And it is a game. At least that is what it has become for you. No telling what it is to Sam or casual onlookers. Your relationship with Sam is unusual to say the least. Combative, contentious, loud, heated-- highly dysfunctional by any psychological metric. She has tricked you, embarrassed you, having hit you in the face with fists, fruit and pudding. She made you endure a painful faux tattooing and even shoved you out of an airplane in flight. Before puberty and your growth spurt you rightfully feared the prospect of a beating from her. Tougher males than you have had to “tap out” when going face-to-face with her. For as long as you can remember the two of you have circled each other, opponents.

You enjoy it. Not the hitting so much. She recently invented a game called Boomba, which consisted entirely of hurling large oranges at your back, that was painful, but ultimately your own fault for agreeing to turn your back on her. The time she took you down with a stun gun crossed an unspoken line in your opinion, but no one asked and it went on unspoken. But you do enjoy the give and take. She challenges you. Not in silly contests but in taking you outside the antiseptic, double underwear world your neurotically loving mother has built for you. In some way that you can’t easily codify Sam Puckett is your friend. It is a one-sided friendship, however. She really seems to have no use for you beyond punching bag-object-of-ridicule. The friendliest thing she has ever done toward you is a single apology on the web for embarrassing you. You know how substantial that is in Sam’s world view, but for you, well, it was owed to you. It was the right thing to do, and you were raised to do the right thing. 

Yet, conversely, this deadly creature was also the first girl (not related) to kiss you. While the psychology of women is outside your academic scope you are coming to the conclusion that even the mentally healthiest specimens are complex. Sam Puckett is complicated by an order of magnitude. Over time, in spite of her lying, theft and complete disregard for you as a person, you have come to care about what happens to her. You cannot explain it, you rarely reflect on it. It is much like the air you breathe. It just is. Its greatest manifestation was when you gave up a cruise in order to remove the maleficent Missy when she was reclaiming her place as Carly Shay’s best friend. You said you were protecting iCarly, but Carly said it aloud, “You care about Sam,” and that was true. You could not bear to see Sam so upset, being stripped of the only relationship in her hard life that seemed to anchor her. It is doubtful Sam would do the same for you. She is venal and totally self-absorbed. Her affection seems to be reserved for meat products and Carly. In life you are finding that sometimes we care about people who don’t have the same feelings. 

That was certainly true for you and Carly Shay, for years you had a huge crush on her, you imagined her as your soul mate. You took every opportunity to hug her and prolong the hold too long. You watched for her through the peephole in your door. You were obsessed with her. If you hadn’t been just a boy you might have needed an intervention. Then one day, like a wish being granted you saved her from a speeding taco truck (if your wish had been truly granted it wouldn’t have been a taco truck, it would have been a hail of gangsta gunfire.) After that Carly was yours, what you thought you wanted for years was literally in your hands and it didn’t work. She didn’t love you. She loved what you did. It was Sam who pointed out that the relationship was not real, that you were in Sam’s words, “exotic bacon.” You represented something that Carly thought she should respond to. And so, in one of your first real acts of mature reflection, you stepped away from something you thought you always wanted. You and Carly agreed that you would visit the relationship later. But neither of you did. Both of you knew somehow that friendship was the best you could do. The final proof came only last month. For three months she dated Steven Carson and it honestly did not bother you to see her so happy with someone else. The only source of pain was how mad you felt when it was discovered that Steven was a cheating dirt-head and had hurt her—he made her cry. You imagined how a brother would make it right (well, a brother that wasn’t a spaz artist type). You were going to beat Steven into rubble until it was pointed out that you probably couldn’t. You need to think about getting better at physical things, like you have with arm wrestling.  
The arm wrestling contest does not follow any protocol you have studied on the subject. To prepare, and Freddie Benson always prepares, you read Jackson Colt’s essay on arm wrestling (ghosted by someone—literate and Jackson Colt don’t seem to match-up well) and you are aware that for all her street smarts--and they vastly exceed yours--Sam’s wrist could easily be rolled back by your larger, stronger hand. Van Williams, the original Green Hornet used to beat Bruce Lee at arm wrestling, and you really need to reign in your geek factor, because that tidbit is geek cubed. 

Sam says she is “getting bored,” which is in keeping with her usual annoyed response to your role in the game. You roll up your sleeves and flex. You are sending a message on some level that is outside your conscious mind.   
As you take your seat you note that Sam’s nails aren’t chipped. For years they seemed to be painted with color but chipped up, you always presumed that was from eating fistfuls of whatever meat product was available and frequent punching, usually of you. Today her nails are sculpted, feminine, they gleam and hold your attention. This must be Carly’s influence. Carly is part of the game, too. The three of you present a unique chemistry. You are the brain, Carly is the heart, and Sam is the fist. Like the best relationships the three of you challenge each other, each making the other grow and change. 

The match is on. For an instant you consider simply levering her slim arm (how did she knock out a truck driver with that arm?) into the table top, but beating her would change the game. Mama wins, mama has to win. That is the only dynamic either of you know, so you continue your role of Fredweird with the usual reactions of outrage. You aren’t sure what else you might have if you didn’t play the game. Her arm surges, you resist, just enough to stretch the time out, she is very strong for a girl (she has fireman carried you more than once), and when you let her drive your hand to the wood you publicly exult in the extra second it took her to beat you. She mouths “congratulations” in her patented, Freddie-is-such-a-nub tone.

That is how the game is played. It is a good game and you know how to play it very well. But some part of you thinks it is getting old.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freddie's view of the events of iOMG continues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I recently had requests to finish iWTF I will post the remaining seven chapters over the next few weeks. This work and other iCarly fictions by me are available under the name WhiteKnightro at Fanfiction.net.

You are Freddie Benson, the tech producer on iCarly, a show you named that has grown enormously in popularity over the four years you, Carly and Sam have been producing it. It has won awards and its fans have grown substantially in number. 

The show has been successful and beneficial and the three of you are in some way celebrities. People know who the three of you are. At the party where Steven’s infidelity was confirmed you all had to wear prosthetic make-up to disguise yourselves. Carly leveraged the enormous viewership to get revenge on Steven, publicly burning him on the Internet. Maybe it’s a good thing the two of you never went very far, a Carly scorned is kinda spooky.  
iCarly fans populate forums with questions about your private lives and somehow imagine they know you because you entertain them. The show has certainly opened a new avenue to meeting girls. Before, you could only talk to a few females in your school, but since the Moonlight Twi-Blood segment you have found your popularity with the opposite sex enhanced. Some young ladies are very susceptible to your imitation of a sensitive vampire. Briefly you wonder if Tori Vega would fall for it. You’ve checked her out on the net; you aren’t a stalker, but doing! The sudden availability of female company has made you appreciate the real friendship you have cultivated with Carly and Sam, both of whom know you well enough that the vampire illusion has no teeth (you think that’s funny, but it is the kind of humor only English teachers appreciate). 

The girls did a great job tonight. They are energetic, funny and attractive. You are a little mixed on the Old Spice commercial parody. You think it was funny, but you question its value as art. But iCarly devours good material and bad. The show is very hungry. 

Sam just complimented Brad, the new tech intern. He IS good, but Sam never compliments. And he is not as good as you. Was this a sideways jab at you? You step into character and fire off some standard prattle about Sam beating people as a matter of social routine. It’s not A material but fulfills your role in the game. Sam asks about the Moodface project. She wants to help? On something academic? The sun does not rise in the west and Sam Puckett does not behave like this. Your spider sense tingles. She has launched elaborate schemes to abuse you in the past and you are now what battered people call “hyper alert” always on the look-out for the out-of-place that augurs danger. There will be no more “Clown Day” embarrassments. So why did you turn your back during Boomba? Life is full of contradictions.

You touch her arm to confirm she’s not a holographic projection. When your hand is on her something occurs. You can’t name it specifically but something flickers on her face. And she does not hit you. You go to Defcon four.

It is the evening and the three of you are at the movies. Not the iCarly Holy Trinity, but you, Brad, and whatever alien entity has taken over Sam’s body. Who is this woman? When Brad suggested you all go see the latest re-mastered release of Galaxy Wars Sam’s reaction should have been a roll of her eyes and to call you both “techno-febes.” You thought perhaps she would blend the two of you into “Beddie.” Instead she enthusiastically agreed as if the theater were handing out free samples of grilled pork. You still had to buy Deadbeat Puckett’s ticket, but the girl seated between you and Brad is now offering you the jumbo popcorn tub you bought her. Sam has never shared popcorn with you. She has never shared anything with you. She guards her food like some great cat devouring a kill on the veldt. And the air around you, it’s like walking past the makeup counter at the mall. Sam has always smelled like a delicious mix of smoky barbecue and fried food. Only when she was dating Pete did she wear perfume and this scent is better than that time. It does not register that you can tell the difference between the two. 

You and Brad see that Sam gets safely home, which is like having two clown fish escort a barracuda, but as she walks to the door you note how her golden hair falls down her back and how her hips rock and sway. You reflect on your growing awareness that your friend is female. You always knew she was a girl but with Sam there is a lot of non-traditional behavior to sort through. For you it crystallized on the day you both helped rebuild Carly’s room after the fire. You demonstrated the springboard by bouncing into the bed. Sam, not to be outdone launched herself on top of you. Role playing Freddie responded with “fear” and outrage over the assault, but your honest reaction was purely biological. You were on a bed with Sam Puckett and your hormones were working. You noticed her shape, when exactly did she become so distinctly non-male? Your mother raised you to respect women, and Sam fit that basic definition, but this was like looking at non-psycho girls at the mall, like looking at Tori Vega. There was doing! Sam now filled her jeans with very feminine angles. You had to avert your eyes from what was no longer the draped shirt of a fourteen year-old girl. Tonight, you let yourself stare—just a little. Sam would be really hot if she weren't a mass murderer in training. 

Later, pulling the covers over you, you cannot deny the laughter, the fun that you had tonight. That part is unchanged even improved. Without Carly there, something changed. Brad changed the dynamic in a way you cannot articulate. There was no need to play the game tonight. You enjoyed spending time with Sam even more than usual, and you are thankful for whatever mood altering head trauma that calmed her violent tendencies. As sleep closes in around you, you remember her at that wedding where the bride thought she loved Spencer. Sam looked at you playfully and called you “Internet boy” and you felt strangely weak and warm.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freddie keeps going.

You are Freddie Benson, honor roll student in his element running a project on lock-in night at school and something is very, very wrong. Sam is plotting some major offensive. That is the only plausible explanation. The pleasant, attractive girl who shared popcorn has not gone away. Today she has been helpful, nice, as close to sweet as Sam Puckett can probably get without outright bursting into flames.

  
She ran an errand for you and Brad. She brought your tech to you. Cables, drives, things you need to set-up the Moodface app environment. But the guacamole and chips is too much, the guacamole forces your hand, literally. You slap a chip out of Brad’s unsuspecting grip. The thing disguised as Sam looks surprised, even hurt and asks why you did that.

  
Between this and the movie the other night you cannot take any more. You pull her aside and demand she explain her sudden “Sam Version 2.0” improved performance approach. “What’s your game?” you ask.  
“No game,” she says. No! Sam would not answer like that. Where’s the fire, the rage? Your grabbing her alone was worth some kind of blow. Suddenly you focus on the red and white stripes of her blouse. She’s wearing stripes? Sam hates stripes! Your geek kicks-in and for a moment you envision a pod in some basement that this alien burst out of in a slimy special effects sequence. Whatever her scheme is, it runs deeper and more cleverly than anything prior. This could be a scheme of Biblical proportions, the invasion of Normandy for destroying you. This feels like the whole Melanie mess.

  
The Melanie mix-up. You honestly thought you were being played until the kiss. You knew Melanie was real the instant she kissed you. Why on earth did you run from a hot girl who was kissing you? You wouldn’t run if a hot girl kissed you today, that’s for sure. Still, you never admitted the clarity you came to on this point. You maintained your insistence that you had outwitted Sam because how would you ever explain that Melanie’s kiss was not like Sam’s? Sam’s was… different, better somehow. Some conversations aren’t worth starting.

  
Inside you smile because you love this. She challenges you with these little puzzles. You will miss it when things change, because nothing lasts forever. You move up to defcon three until this latest attempt to abuse you is past or at least revealed. Sam suggests that you get on with the project and you agree. She takes a seat in front of the cameras as you initiate a scan.

  
You turn your substantial intellect to the Moodface app. It takes several processors to make this work. A processor to run the grid map of the face, a processor to run the SQL database, and another to crunch the numbers and sort the billions of possibilities down to the most likely disposition for the facial characteristics that are captured. You aren’t fond of the object oriented code the Pear App people mandate for the applications.  
You focus on the output panel of the app. What will her mood be? Bored? Homicidal? Smart money would bet on hungry if hungry was a mood. With her recent, anti-Sam like behavior maybe the whole processor array would short out with the smell of ozone. What finally screen prints paralyzes you. The readout on Sam is less expected than a second season of Firefly.

  
Mood: in love. Love? Was someone holding up a bucket of fried chicken during the scan? Still, the biochemical alterations that love induces would explain her recent behavior modification. Love makes people do strange things, adjust who they are in order to please. But who? Who was Sam in love with? Sam’s choice in men read like a high school version of the Ten Most Wanted list. Your mind quickly compiles the available evidence and distills the equation. There was only one logical result: Brad. The compliment, the interest in hanging out with him, the willingness to see Galaxy Wars. Sam’s right, you are a doof. You should have seen it. And you thought Cort was stupid.

  
You are now out of your element. You need Carly’s insight. Carly will have the right response. You have to find her. You state that the test was inconclusive and hurtle out of the room declaring that you need a tissue. That is why you will never be more than scripted on-screen talent on iCarly. You hear Sam say, “That’s why you’re behind the camera.” You can’t ad-lib for chiz.

  
The amazement of your discovery transmutes into giddy anticipation. You’ve got her! After years of punishment, the invulnerable, unfeeling Sam is now exposed. You can use this information to finally get payback, to put the smack down on her, you can…, and you slow your pace, you can what? Hurt her? Bring her down as she surely has done to you every time she had the chance? Is that the man you want to be? Sam once texted you from Carly’s phone professing Carly’s love. When you expressed your very real outrage she was blasé, telling you, “Nobody loved you before, nobody loves you now.” You remember how hard that was; to have your feelings toyed with. One more lesson Sam taught you. Trading punches in the arm was one thing, you would NOT hit someone in the heart. Not even Sam.

  
You reveal the results of the Moodface App scan and your deduction to Carly who has the right reaction. She is excited as a friend should be. It sets your head into a better place. You are still jazzed about the fact that your app is working, though. This is a major score. But as you leave Carly to do whatever is it she is going to do, your excitement has cooled quickly and your brain has taken charge once again. You understand that Brad is a great guy, but he seems kind of like you. Why does Sam hate you and find him desirable?

  
You are not quite at peace with the idea that Sam hates you. Why exactly does she hate you? She mocks your tech, your hobbies, your mother (well, you understand that), your past infatuation with Carly. She calls you ugly, routinely questions your manhood and pities any female you become involved with. Why? You have only fired back when fired upon. You have defended yourself and gotten some good shots in, but Sam seems deeply passionate in her dislike of you. She enjoys seeing you in pain. It is a mystery to you that someone should delight in tormenting another person. You can only believe there is something about you that annoys her at a very fundamental level.

  
Regardless of the grief she has rained down, you have such a good time with Sam, you laugh together, work together--you would not trade the time spent with her. You enjoy the rounds of meatball golf; it is the joy you have playing with her. It goes like that, with the two of you laughing, exchanging knowing glances at something funny in class or when watching TV. She builds your trust, then when your guard is lowered you turn your back and Boomba! You get oranges in the back. Still the fun outweighs the pain. You have shared so much over the brief years of your young life, the fact that this person does not actually care about you in the same way is more than sad. But doesn’t everyone feel that way? Doesn’t everyone want to be liked by the people they like? You wonder briefly if you will ever really connect with a girl in a way that duplexes, where the packet traffic goes both ways. *sigh* you are such a geek.

It is later in the evening. When you ask, Carly has confronted Sam and she has denied any attraction to Brad. For you, for your mind, that is sufficient. You have presented the data, but this isn’t really your business. Once you committed to not leveraging the information for revenge, it really stopped being anything you needed to ponder. Carly, as you suspected, maybe even feared, is not satisfied. She wants the world shaped a certain way. She wants to play matchmaker, she uses the analogy of horses in a barn to describe getting Sam and Brad together. It is the closest you and Carly have come to talking about sex since you watched two squirrels “wrestling” while you both hunted Bigfoot. You have fun with the barn talk. Not as Freddie Benson, the nubby little boy tech nerd you once were, but as someone else, someone you may be becoming.

  
You agree to help isolate the potential couple. You don’t have a plan and you do very poorly without a plan. In the project room you burst in and get everyone to come out and look at a two-headed frog. Even as you say it, you hear Bruce Campbell in the first Spider Man movie, “That’s the best you got?”

  
As you separate from your classmates you think about Brad and Sam back in the “barn.” Something cold turns in your chest.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still going

You are Fred Benson and it is almost the midnight hour when Carly relates to you that she and Sam had an argument over the “barn mating.” It was Carly that Sam got mad at, not you, and that feels good. Not that you are afraid of Sam. Oh, Sam is an elemental force rightfully respected, like a tsunami or an earthquake.  You know she can clean your clock with one of her fierce-as-a-wolverine attacks.  Those days are something in the rearview mirror.  Years ago you had a lot of fears, and being pummeled by Sam was surely one of them, but time with Sam Puckett has changed you. Through the years as she would hit you, bend your arm, or hurl you to the ground you began to see that pain like that passes.  It’s the fear of pain that hurts us.

Fact is Sam’s courage has permeated your thinking. You are who you are today because of her. Her reckless abandon has stretched you, forced you to color outside the lines authority has always presented. Sam has helped you walk into frightening spaces (break-ins, flea bag motels) and out again. Only she could have persuaded you to commit the un-Benson-like acts you have engaged in over the years. Freddie would have hated to see Carly leave for a private school, but without Sam he never would have actively sabotaged the interview. Only Sam has that kind of bite.

Sam is brave, but not fearless. Her reaction to her attraction to Brad is proof of that. Sam isn’t afraid of authority. Unlike you with your conditioned need to follow rules and do things mom and the law say to. You know Sam is afraid of rejection. You suspect that she does the cruel things she does in order to bring the rejection in first. If, by being hateful and mean (like not inviting Gibby to the Karma party to celebrate Neville’s fall) she can invite rejection then in some twisted way she controls it.

Sam deserves to be happy, no matter how she treats you. What bothers you is that her rough life has led her to this terrible mindset that is poisoning her growth. Your logical mind can extrapolate exactly where this attitude will take her and you feel so bad about that. But it is more than feeling sorry for her. You know you could be Sam. All that separates you from Sam is upbringing. What kind of dysfunctional mother you each had. If your mother didn’t so obsessively love you, who would you be? Perhaps that is why you care so much for someone who actively dislikes you. Ultimately you look at her and you see the road not taken. And really neither of you chose the road. It was assigned.

Sam’s past is making her deny a truly decent opportunity and that is something you will fight. She is funny, strong and yes, smart in ways that even you aren’t. Brad is a nice guy, and while something about the two of them does not sit right with you she needs to step out and take a chance. Sam, in her own, mean, brutal way, saved you from a relationship mistake with Carly. Can you do any less for Sam now? You have to try. Freddie Benson does the right thing.

You will talk to Sam. You need to try to get her to take a chance, to put herself out there and risk the rejection. It is payback time after all.

You find her sitting outside in the courtyard. “Yo yo” you say walking out into the beautiful spring night. The warm breeze carries the scent of irises. The moon is full and silver white.

“Carly send you to find me?” she asks.

No, you respond. She is sullen; the Moodface app might display a “ready to kill” read out if it had one.

She questions if you know that she and Carly argued and you tell her that you know that, but that Carly didn’t send you.

She tells you she doesn’t care what your app says, she’s, “not into Brad like that.”

You explain how her behavior appears. And deep behind your eyes something whispers that even you haven’t examined the equation from all angles. Your logic is sharp and pure, you highlight the fact that she wants to spend time with you and Brad.

“And that means I’m in love with him?”

“Well you hate me.”

She denies ever saying she hates you. You almost laugh out loud. You have never seen her like this. It’s like the nice Sam of the last few days is at war with the Sam you have grown to know and...uhm, endure. You correct her. You tell her that you still have the birthday card she gave you, signed with her hatred and it’s true you do. In fact, you keep everything Sam has given you. Again, in the deep space behind your eyes something sparks, but you are too engaged in the moment to examine it.

She demands that you leave. You’ve seen this Sam before. You know she is at some kind of breaking point. In the next moment she is going to strike. You agree to go, but you are going to finish what you set out to do. She threatens you with a double fist face dance, and you stand before the threat without a trace of the game. The man you are becoming does not run in fear or cower. She can’t have Fredwiener dashing away tonight. She can’t have the guy she spanks or throws out of chairs like old laundry. This is real. Friends look each other in the eye and speak the truth. Looking Sam in the eye is hard because her eyes have become extremely attractive, distracting. Sam has gone from cute tomboy to…something amazing to look at.

You have practiced your speech and it sounds good.  You talk about doing something despite the fear. You speak positively; you don’t put her down for being afraid. Sam has been put down too much. You will never play in that space where too many have let her down.

You say straight to her lovely face, “You never know what could happen…”

And the whole world changes forever. Sam Puckett, your enemy and friend crosses the space between you both physically and metaphorically. This is not the strike you were prepared to take. She presses her lips onto yours and it’s like lightening arcing under your flesh. All reality has funneled down to just the contact between the two of you. If the entire school exploded you would not know it. You taste guacamole, ham and gum and you think them the best combination since spaghetti tacos. You smell spicy perfume again and some apple and melon scent from her hair. Her hair.  So soft where it brushes your face, you want to feel that hair in your hands.

Her hands on your shoulders are gripping you firmly with the best use of her unusual strength that you have ever experienced. Your heart is beating, pounding. Blood is thumping in your ears. Synapses are firing and you are overwhelmed. You have never rehearsed this, never considered this.  Your first kiss with Sam was tentative, experimental. This isn’t like Melanie or even Carly. This kiss is out of some story that you can’t put down. It is hopeful and scarred, hungry and adult. There is something incredibly powerful here, much more powerful than an angry Sam, maybe the most powerful thing you have ever experienced. It towers over you, surrounds you, terrifies and thrillsyou. After your first kiss you thought about how you should have done it better, but you never thought that Sam Puckett would ever kiss you again.

There is no precedent for this. She has never given you any reason to believe she was attracted to you. She has slapped you when you were trying to be reasonable; she has mocked you in front of strangers and potential girlfriends. If this is part of some plot Sam is the greatest actress and tactician of all time, the Genghis Khan of psychological warfare.

You remember saying to her from behind the camera once, “Aw Sam if you love me, just say so.” She made a face like she had been slapped and emitted a puzzled, jerky sound. It wasn’t a clever comeback. It didn’t even move the needle on the making sense meter.

You complete the obvious equation: She’s in love, it’s not with Brad, you urged her to act on her feelings and she kissed you. “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

She pulls away with a wet sound as lips part. What has happened is not lost on you, but neither is the scope of it clear. It is like trying to see the entire ocean from the shore. She is looking at you with a kind of fearful anticipation. She is so very afraid, so very vulnerable. Once again she has manifested courage that lights your way. This may be the most serious thing that has ever happened to you. Your next words, your actions must be perfect. But you aren’t perfect. You are smart, but you have no plan. This is so far removed from how you think. You need time to think. What if this isn’t about thinking? And something in your stomach drops.

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

“I’scool.”

 You are Freddie Benson and you can’t ad lib for chiz.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after the kiss and before Troubled Waters

You are Freddie Benson and you are exotic bacon.

This is not a revelation, you have known this for some time, however the significance of it has just been multiplied by a factor you cannot calculate. Your central processor is pegged and overheating; all available system resources are consumed as a never tested program enters an infinite loop. You are bacon and the greatest lover of bacon in your world is a person that hates you, but she can’t hate you because you are bacon, but she must hate you because that’s her function. And your brain chases after a solution like a dog after its own tail, the scenery repeats as you pass the same facts over and over again in a circle. No wonder Enterprise captains use this approach to beat computers, this chiz is tough!

Sam Puckett just kissed you. Kisses are acts of affection, the only exception being when mobsters mark someone for termination. Being marked for death is actually more in keeping with Sam’s treatment of you, but it didn’t feel like she was going to kill you. In fact, if you had to pick checking out under a taco truck or dying at her lips you are pretty sure you would pick her lips.  

The kiss came from some unknown corner, some blind side, an anti-matter universe where opposites rule; in that world up is down and north is south. Why did you never see this attraction before? Why did you ignore the sneaked glances, the passed love notes in classes, the flirtatious texts? Because they NEVER happened! That whistle you hear is the crazy train leaving the station.

Restart. Why did you never notice her attraction to you before? Maybe it was all the pain. It’s hard to imagine someone wanting to hold your hand, cuddle with you, kiss you when they are actively inflicting physical and emotional damage. Of COURSE it was the pain. Why would you suspect someone devoted to raising purple bruises on your flesh of caring about you? It’s the classic Superman disguise. Who would suspect Sam Puckett of having affection for you when she was slamming you emotionally and physically into the turnbuckles of life?

She hates you. She HAS to hate you. That is magnetic north. If she does not hate you, how will you navigate? Everything you have ever done with her is predicated on the fundamental premise that the two of you are opposed to each other. Yin and Yang, black and white, Sam and Freddie. If she doesn’t hate you what will you talk about? Does the world still revolve in the same direction if Sam Puckett loves you? What else has changed? Is the sky still there when you look up or will you now see fields of purple grass and unicorns that eat bushes made of cotton candy?

Does she hate you? You remember the first time the two of you kissed. You said goodbye to each other that night with mutual, “I hate yous” but you were pretty sure those were ironic, with a fairly clear subtext that you didn’t really hate each other. Ironic and subtext—how is it that you got only an A- in Honors English last semester?

WTF?! Isn’t this where Rod Serling comes on and says, “Submitted for your approval: Freddie Benson a high school student who understood his place and his purpose, until now, with one kiss, Freddie Benson has just entered—The Twilight Zone”? Then you remember that most of your peers don’t have your appreciation for vintage fantasy television. Being an alpha nerd is such a lonely place.

 Is that your head throbbing?

You need more time to think. You have prepared for a math exam and are being tested on…what? You don’t even know what it is you are being tested on.

Start over. The kiss means she has warm feelings for you. That is what kisses are about. Your MoodApp says she loves you. But this isn’t how relationships work. This wasn’t gradual, this wasn’t shy glances across the room with a cute girl, a text message or Splashpage exchange before meeting to get a smoothie where two people attracted to each other slowly, shyly hook-up and date, agree to go to homecoming, win the king and queen crowns then break-up when they meet someone else at different colleges. This is a car smashing into your driver’s side because the other driver is a lunatic who ran a red light, the romantic version of road rage, this is 180 degrees from where you thought you and Sam were headed. Which was where? Not a date, that’s for sure, some kind of law suit maybe, a Judge Judy sort of showdown in court:

You picture yourself in a full body cast eating from a tube, unable to speak, your testimony buzzes out in a Stephen Hawking-like electronic robot voice. Behind you Sam is straightjacketed, strapped on an upright a table while wearing that hockey mask they put on Hannibal Lector. Your mother is weeping in the background while Carly and Spencer sit shaking their heads. Gibby is shirtless, holding up a toilet plunger.

Okay, that’s not real. Toilet plunger? Start again, review the facts. You knew you were tiring of the game. You are getting too old to run from anybody, you are not a boy anymore. And Sam is not a little girl either. Is this evolution, some kind of maturation? Does that explain the violence? Sam’s abusive treatment was the reaching out that children do? Children pick on, make fun of, and abuse others they “like.” Sam is unquestionably the greatest case of arrested development you have ever encountered but shouldn’t you have seen this coming?

You realize that you did not kiss her back. You were frozen, paralyzed by the enormity of what was happening. Did you want to kiss her back? You can’t deny the thrill of it, the sheer rush of kissing this young woman who stirs up so many feelings in you.

How do you feel about the kiss? For all the confusion you feel, it was GREAT. A pretty girl kissed you, how bad could that ever be? Remember what you thought just earlier tonight: if a pretty girl kissed you today you would not run away. Even on the most stringent scales, Sam is a pretty girl, a beautiful girl when you reflect on it; a kiss from a beautiful girl should be a cause for celebration. But this is SAM PUCKETT, the Anti-Freddie. See any given day of your life for the last four years for details on assault.

How do you feel about her? Not the squabbling parts you have each played, but whatever lives deeper inside you. Looking at her now you cannot deny the physical attraction; you aren’t sure how you went so long without acknowledging that component. But the world has lots of Tori Vegalishess ladies walking around. Sam is more than “Regina Goodbody.” When you get past the remnants of the game, when you focus on the facts, you like Sam the person, you know that you enjoy her company, you enjoy the things you have done together, but with the exception of the recent movie, and some meat golf, you travel in threes: Carly, Sam and Freddie. Yes, the two of you have been hanging more together, playing together, your recent exchange when she mocked your family and you parried with “like there aren’t freaks and mutants in your family,” her response, “touché” was an incremental increase in some kind of maturity. Growth? Change?  You don’t hate spending time with her, you have kept everything she has ever given you.  You don’t hate her, far from it, but how far?

Love? What is love? You’re in high school. What do you know about love?

What is she expecting from you? What do you have to do next? She was looking at you with those compelling blue eyes (when did her eyes get that way?) but she just turned.

She is walking away in silence.

You do not pursue her. You think you want to, but you are a creature of experience, of conditioning. You don’t have a routine for this. The Freddie of the game might have run away screaming or whining but you are putting that guy in data archive. So who are you now?

A chilling idea twinkles like ice in moonlight. Is she insane? Has she lost her mind? What if her awful Discovery Channel eating machine approach to life, the rough upbringing, has somehow loosened her wiring, shaken the bulbs from her chandelier? Could she be brain damaged? Swell. A gorgeous girl is attracted to you and you suspect she is brain damaged. Sam may not be the only person with self-esteem issues.

She is almost gone the door closing behind her. Your feet don’t move your voice is unused. What kind of man are you? Are you really still a boy? Who are you now?

Crazy. This is crazy. You want to wake up now, and yet…at the same time you don’t. Crazy.

And she is gone.

You are alone in the midnight breeze. You taste her on your lips. Her scent lingers and you remember the warmth of her closeness, the tenderness and uncertainly. What happened just now is not cerebral. You need to respond from some new undiscovered place within you.

You were tired of the game and looking for a change. Careful what you look for because you just might find it.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding Sam

You are Freddie Benson and you are worried. It has been three days since you last spoke with Sam Puckett a girl who has always delighted in disrupting your peace and who, three days ago, performed her _Magnum Opus_ of disruption by kissing you. The shock wave from that act rips back and forth in your skull, whipsawing your focus and shattering your ability to do anything but think about The Kiss. Your reaction to her kiss shifts like one of those “Make your Own Adventure” books you read as a kid. In one reaction you are angry and you tell her off (usually over the Internet from some remote location because she can break you like a Styrofoam cup). You sternly tell her she had no business kissing you, explaining that expressing some inexplicable affection after years of practiced abuse is illogical, inappropriate and frustrating. Even you admit that you are whining when you envision this reaction.

In another reaction you explain to her in your best I-like-you-but-not-that-way voice that you are flattered but that for the good of your mutual friendship and the _iCarly_ show, you don’t want to complicate matters. While your logical mind can compensate for complication, sorting through the details of a completely rewritten Sam and Freddie is intimidating. The two of you spent years building this stressful, abusive and dysfunctional relationship which limps like a three-legged dog lost in the city. For all of your thinking about change, you understand the rules of your frenemies game, and while you haven’t actually won a substantial percentage of your disputes with her at least you know how to play. The new game she is proposing feels like running an obstacle course blindfolded while instructions are shouted at you in a language you don’t speak. What in the world would you and Sam Puckett do on a date? Hold hands? Would you reach under a running lawn mower? What about a long walk in the park? She’d end up defending you from muggers and freaks exposing themselves. The park perception is straight from your mom and frankly you think you’d be just fine in the park on your own.

Many reactions are variations on those two. There is a third, distinct reaction which you prefer to not consider. It is quite chilling and frightens you more than _Paranormal Activity_ which you thought was the ultimate story about a woman with scary behavior.

You have wrestled with The Kiss and your mutating reactions for three sleep deprived days. Nor have you had an appetite, your meals untouched on the plate. All resources are dedicated to this issue. You don’t want things to change, but you need them to change. Who are you kidding? They’ve changed, dude, the question is, can they go back? You can put on your punching bag suit and let her wale on you until you go away to college. That would not be that hard. You really don’t want to lose what you and Sam do have. It’s comfortable and safe. Comfortable +Safe +Sam Puckett= WTF?

No, you won’t go back, even if you could, but the future is daunting. You’ve spent every waking minute of the last three days thinking about it. Should you ask her out? Will that question put you in a cast? If she goes out with you which one of you will be the girlfriend? Will you negotiate a deal for No-Abuse-Fridays? And carrying the relationship to a physical conclusion, does Sam Puckett devour her mate after… Wow, player you need to get some sleep.

You really need to talk with her about The Kiss. Your brain is raw and blistered from thinking about it solo. You need her input. You cannot resolve this dilemma without more data. You have flow charted various scenarios wherein the two of you dialogue and you have some responses drafted depending on her reply. Virtually all of them seem to factor in a trip to the emergency room for you. You have practiced the phrase: “Sam, don’t kill me,” like a gunfighter honing his quick draw.

But she won’t contact you. She has not responded to any of your pings, you have texted, called, e-mailed and IM’ed without a reply. You even went to her house but no one answered the door. If you were Sam you are sure you would have picked the lock and searched the place. If you were Sam you would have stopped hitting Freddie years ago.  

Her failure to respond has you worried, worried about this young woman who reached out with a gentle and uncharacteristically tender act. You saw fear on her face when The Kiss ended, and you don’t want to see that from her. You are her friend and if she is hurting somewhere then you want to help. That is what friends do. Some quiet part of you is confident that she has your back as well. Yes, she’s your friend, you will do the right thing, but you cannot escape the growing perception that your anxiety feels different, bigger somehow than helping a buddy in a tough space. You are determined in way that is staggeringly powerful that you will not stop until you get to her side. You need to see her; you need her to be okay. It is a feeling of protectiveness that you have never felt toward her before and that she needs like a third foot.

What is happening to you?

So you are going to Carly’s. She might know where Sam is. You have avoided Carly because you have not told her that you and Sam kissed again. The first kiss created enough stress that you promised never to keep anything from each other again. A promise you are now intending to avoid observing, which is not quite the same as breaking. In your steaming, aching but honorable brain you have connived your way out, telling yourself that no one put time restrictions on disclosure. You have penciled in your ten year high school reunion as a good time to do the reveal. A future in banking and politics is clearly on the table.

You need to be with someone else who knows Sam. You have spent three days wrestling with forces that resist your logic. Sam trusts and loves Carly. You trust and love Carly. Somewhere in all that trust and love there has to some answer that your brain has not been able to pin down. Your brain. Your brain has taken you so far in life, but you are now pretty sure that brains, thinking, won’t be your salvation this time. You are beginning to think brains may be overrated. Your intellect has not helped you with Sam Puckett. It’s like she is some kind of anti-thought creature from a pulsing star system of rampant energy.

You walk into the Shay apartment and notice that Spencer’s pants are way too tight, like they are painted on. Spencer’s actions and circumstances long ago ceased to surprise you. He is an artist you tell yourself. So long as nothing bursts into flame you roll with it. He states that he is wearing Carly’s pants and you suggest that he take them off. You almost flub it by using the phrase, “you should take off Carly’s pants.” Sleep deprivation really does affect your mental facility.

Spencer exits to extricate himself from the clutching pants and you express your concern about Sam’s absence.

“I’m really getting worried about Sam. It’s been three days…”

“Since you two kissed?”

Chiz. Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz Chiz.

You feel your features erupt like billiard balls during a break and you understand why you will never have the nickname, “Pokerface Freddie.”  

Another factor enters the increasingly unwieldy algorithm. Carly knows. Now comes the Carly-mad. That thing she does where the words all rocket out of her like some fire hose of indignation. 

What you witness is a performance art interpretation of your own thinking since The Kiss. Carly successfully compresses three days of chaotic, unordered Fred-think in one multi-second Big Bang of the new iCarly universe.

She halts her torrent with a demanding: “What’s goin’ on?!”

What comes out of your mouth is something from the deepest recesses of your stressed, exhausted mental state:

“Do you have any fruit?”

Carly does not treat it as a freakish non-sequitur. Instead, she wraps it cleverly into her condemnation of your lack of candor about the kiss. She could have done the same thing if you had simply strung random words together: “Bubbles mutter roundtable colored peanuts Proofrock?” It’s part of why she can work without a script on the show.

You start to explain what little you understand about it when your mind, perhaps suddenly not isolated and distracted by multiple reactions breaks loose with an idea that would have come to you much faster before all the feelings about Sam.

Feelings about Sam. This is something new for you. New elements need to be defined so that program functions properly. But this is not a program, and you are again reminded that some things are not about what you think, but about what you feel. What you feel? What you think you may feel scares you.

Focus: You recall Pear phones have a security feature that allows the owner to track a system if the system password is used. You lead Carly over to family room computer. You bring up the Pear tracking site and Carly types in the password. Strangely, you are pretty sure that you know what it is. You are even more sure when you count the masked dots that appear on the screen. It is not icky to you, it is just how Sam thinks. And again, you are surprised by how well you understand her, how much attention you have paid to her over the years. What is happening to you?

Carly, with an impatience that reflects her own concern for Sam, demands an answer. What appears on the screen is surprising to you both, but maybe a little less to you: Sam is in a mental hospital.  Immediately after the kiss you had wondered if Sam was disturbed in some manner. Not just because she kissed you, but because her behavior had changed so radically before the kiss. She was sweet, generous, doing a good job of being what would pass for thoughtful in normal people.

Once again you have to face the possibility that she is not right somehow. Why does the idea of her being mentally unstable and attracted to you disturb you so much? It would explain things, and it would give you the appropriate reaction: “I can’t do a thing about her feelings; her wiring isn’t up to code.”

You don’t want that avenue to be open. You want something else. You begin to prepare arguments for why she is not crazy. You will use them when you find her even if she is eating a chair and talking to doorknobs.

Like you did a moment before, Gibby walks into the room. Thank goodness Seattle is not full of serial killers because the Shay apartment offers zero defense at the perimeter. He announces his entrance with his signature: “Gibbaay.” You kind of wish you could do do that. For an instant you imagine walking into a room trumpeting, “Fffffredddeeeee!” That thought is so revolting you pitch it into some deep brain crevice, cover it with dirt and cement then erect a shopping mall on top of it. 

Carly tells Gibby that you are all headed to a mental hospital. Most people would have questions, concerns about why, where, returning when. Gibby’s response is a fist pumping “yeah!” as if school has just been cancelled.

Gibby is not like other life forms on the planet, he often seems oblivious to what people think about him. Like Sam he is not bound by rules and order. In some ways he is a gentler, less abrasive Sam. The biggest difference is that you don’t want to kiss Gibby.

There it is again. You have kissed her twice and something that is not your mind is trying to get to a third kiss. That is the reaction you understand least of all, the one that is coming back again and again. It surfaces unbidden from a place you fear, a place where thought and planning have no authority. In that reaction you ask her out and you imagine walking, playing, smiling and looking into sky blue eyes while listening to a sexy voice that plays tonal games with accents and sounds. She makes you laugh and puts you in touch with places you can’t go without her. In this reaction, where you are spending more and more time, before the date ends you pull her into a kiss. You want to kiss her again. And again. And again.

What is happening to you?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm never gonna be your little girl friend."

You are Freddork, Frediluape, Fredstone, Frednub, Fredstick, Fredly, Frednerd, Fredenstein and like some crazy dream you are moving down an incredibly long hall trying to open doors. Crazy. That seems to be a recurring theme these days. If someone had told you four days ago that you would be in the nut hatch (“Fredward Benson!” Your mother’s voice snaps) mental institution looking for Sam Puckett you might have dismissed that person.  Then again, in the last four years you have done some pretty crazy things. You’ve been held prisoner by a lunatic, been abandoned on the roadside in Japan, watched one of your best friends fight the female MMA champ, been evaluated for launching into orbit and broken into the studios of one the largest entertainment conglomerates on the planet (and stolen the frozen head of the founder). You can sum up each of those moments, but what you are doing today and how you got here defies simple description. You’ve thought about it for three days and you have only brain blisters to show for it.

It started with The Kiss. The Kiss was a fuse that set off a continuing cascade of explosions that don’t seem to have any conclusion in sight. Who knew a kiss had this kind of power?

Because of a kiss you are reading the text on door labels when they are present, but in order to be thorough you are poking your head into each room to confirm Sam is not in one of them. Some rooms have people, some are empty, and some are locked. You tried using one of the unoccupied terminals to look her up but had no time to try to bypass the login restriction. Going from room to room is tedious but you cannot think of anything else to do. Maybe you could if your brain were not so consumed with thoughts of The Kiss and its implications.

You haven’t slept well lately, your eyes have a dry, wooly feel and you are pretty sure this is not a dream but the frightening sameness of your actions has you worried.  A lot of things have you worried. Your clearly disrupted thinking, your level of anxiety (yes, you’re worried about your worry) but most upsetting of all? Sam being in this place.

This place.  It is totally outside your experience and light years from any comfort zone. In fact it shines light on a fear you didn’t know you had (you did think of composing a database of your known fears when you were younger). This place is overflowing with people who have lost the most precious facility of all: the ability to think clearly. This structure is essentially a storehouse for broken people. It reminds you of all the discarded stuff that Spencer gathers to do his art. The people here clearly have no function in any world you can envision but they are alive. You cannot ponder this point anymore and you drop it overboard into the ocean of thoughts that is your brain. But one consideration haunts you as you watch the observations sink into the depths of your mind: how many outside are just as broken but have yet to be identified?

For some reason Sam is here, somewhere in this warehouse of broken brains, Sam, your friend.  You have to get her out of here.

Friend? Is that adequate to explain what you are feeling? No, your friendship or whatever it was has been hit by gamma rays, been bitten by a radioactive spider, it has changed.  If Spencer, or Gibby, or even Carly were in this place you’d be arriving with flowers and good wishes for a speedy recovery. Three days ago you would have visited Sam with the same traditional behaviors.

Not now. The thought of her being in this place, scared, confused, ill in some way has made something rise up inside you. There is a fierceness in your need for her to be well. Her state of being should not affect you so drastically, but it does. She has brought out ferocity in you many times with her abuse, but the only time you can remember this intensity, this sense of desperation, is when she almost fell to her death. That night you pulled her back in the window. You gripped her tightly while she cried, overcome with shock over what might have happened.

You begin moving down the hall again, and the thought jobs begin again. She was behaving so strangely the last time you saw her, going so far as to kiss you, someone she hates. You want only to find her, pull her in from whatever dangerous heights she finds herself in. You want to hold on to her and make her be well. You will not let her fall.

You don’t realize that you are nodding. You know full well what is happening to you. You aren’t stupid. You’re not sure you can say it out loud, but you are starting to look it in the face. What bothers you is that it makes no sense.

The halls and rooms have a smell. An antiseptic smell that was your smell for the first eight years of your life, until you persuaded your mom to back-off on the cleaning with hospital grade soaps and disinfectants.

You push into room 113 discretely. Two rooms back the guy who thought he was Ginger Fox wanted you to direct his video. You are pretty sure he makes that demand of everyone, but the fact that you really did direct one of her videos made the encounter extra creepy (the guy’s wig, false breasts and sausage casing spandex pants were also major contributors).

 In room 113 the blond hair fools you. Someone who could be Sam is sitting on the floor, in a ball, rocking. She is making a sound, an “Mmmh” noise over and over again. Your stomach drops an obscene distance as you stop and stare, the blood in your neck has a sudden, slushy quality.

“Sam?” you say,  your voice has a quiver that startles you.

The rocking blond ball does not stop moving or making the sound.

“Sam?” you repeat. What has happened to her? Never did you think it could be this bad. You feel sick and terrified and…lost?

 “Mmmh.” Rock.

 “Mmmh.” Rock.

The figure slowly, rhythmically, tips forward and back,

Your eyes adjust and you note with a tidal wave of relief that it is not Sam. In fact, you can’t tell if the person is a man or a woman.

You cannot help but stare. It is not polite, but it is only the two of you and the blonde who isn’t Sam clearly does not care.

You should be leaving but you don’t. The eyes that stare hold you. You are looking straight into them and you know that no one is looking back. The eyes. The eyes look ahead, straight through you like some special effect from the remastered _Galaxy Wars._ The eyes are red-rimmed balls of jelly.  They have a fogged, milky consistency.

Behind those eyes is an emptiness, a place of no thought, or that’s what it looks like to you. Whatever intentions live there are like stars in the night sky. They are too far away.

Then it slaps you.  Maybe there are too many thoughts, too much information. Maybe this is an overflowing file system in the human mind. There is no reboot, no rollback, no reload. You feel a spider with legs of ice walk down your back. Who was this person? How did they get here? Can they ever leave?

You are on a ledge, peering into a black space that is deep and cold. What separates you from this lost figure? Aren’t you the same? What could make a difference between you and any person in this awful place?

“Sam loves Freddie!”

What? Is that Carly?

 “Sam loves Freddie!”

It is Carly. What is she saying?  You turn from the ledge and the black place you were contemplating.

“Sam loves Freddie!”

Your steps back are leaden like running in a dream but you are waking up.

“Sam loves Freddie!”

You are out in the hallway in the brighter light, senses at optimal levels again. The cry is coming from your left.

“Sam loves Freddie!”

You are moving toward the sound.

“Sam loves Freddie!”

The last shout barely completes as you push open room 107 to see Sam holding Carly in her powerful grasp. You know those arms and their vampire slayer strength.  Sam backs up in a bizarre hostage posture.

Sam rebels at the sight of you, demanding you leave. Your reaction is instinctual, masterful and wholly unprecedented in your relationship with Sam Puckett.  You walk over and pry her hands loose, never considering for an instant how revolutionary this is. On the Freddie Benson evolutionary chart you have gone from all fours to upright.

Sam and Carly have some ludicrous exchange about licked hands, dirt and peanuts. You aren’t really tuned in. You are looking at her.

 You haven’t seen her in three days, three incredibly long, stressful days. There is an overload of instructions queuing within you. You are glad to see her. You are scared because the time to talk is at hand. There is a packet stream of things to consider but what strikes you most is:

When did she become so beautiful? For the second time in a week you are acutely aware of how lovely she is. You are also aware of her physically. Not the traditional Sam-could-hit-Freddie-at any-time business. For the first time in your life you have to stop yourself from staring at her chest.  You remind yourself that what matters here is helping your friend or whatever it is she is now.

Carly exits with orders that the two of you talk. Carly means well, but does anybody need her to make that happen?

You are alone with Sam in her hospital room. Like the night of the lock-in you are just standing there. You have at least a dozen lead-ins to this conversation, but no words form on your incredibly heavy tongue.  You look sideways at her. It’s happening again, you aren’t talking.

Carly’s voice calls parentally from the hallway:

“I don’t hear talkin’!”

 Okay, apparently Carly IS needed.

Finally Sam asks, “Why’d you come here?” Her tone is angry, not white hot Sam, but don’t stick your hands too close.

You turn to face her, “To figure out why you checked yourself into a mental hospital.”

“You wanna know why?”

“Kinda!” And that is true. You aren’t sure you want to hear what she might say, but you know you have to get some kind of forward motion started.

“Because I hate you.”

You have heard her say those words more times than you can count or recount, but for the first time you feel dashed against some hard surface and there is a plunging sensation in your core. You are numb, frustrated, and angry.

“Then why’d you kiss me?”

“Because I…”

She pauses for an incredibly long time and you peer into the deep shadow of that ledge in room 113.

“I like you?”

 Her tone is reluctant, her body language that of a little girl who knows she has been caught. The words reverberate with a playground hum, you hear a child saying, “Oooooh, Sam likes Freddie!” and there is the sound of delighted children giggling.

You are Freddie Benson, and you are soaring over the city, your cape flapping like wings in the sun drenched wind--there is nothing on Earth you cannot do. Three words. Three words have landed in you with super atomic force taking you back to the night of the lock-in when your world changed forever. You want to give yourself over to this, but you are still Freddie Benson and your mind asserts itself. If the old Sam returns then maybe you are an idiot for indulging this emotion that is suddenly spilling over your brain pan. You will not be an idiot. To pursue her and be rejected would be worse than the Clown Day fiasco. You will not be insane. You are willing to step out into this new land but you need to engage your brain just a little more.

“So, you hate me…and… you like me?”

“You see why I need to be in here?”

She starts to rant about not being able to think or to eat. Exactly like you the last few days. The door opens and an orderly brings in food.

For someone who cannot eat Sam’s power is undiminished. She whirls with startling force, snatching the food tray and shoving the server out the door with combat acrobatic grace. System normal Sam.

“Look Sam, I get that you’re feeling a little…”

She spins with the tray of food, “Oh, who cares!  So I kissed you!”  You are listening closely, taking in every word for in-depth forensic analysis.

“So, so maybe I do like you a little bit.” She plops on the bed, “it doesn’t’ matter, cuz there’s no way I’d ever go out with you or be your little girlfriend --- or dangthisplacemakesgoodquesadillas!”

YES! SHE would be the girlfriend! One worry is off the table.

She’s also thought about going out with you! Everything you have wrestled with up to this point has an analog in her.  But even more telling is that she says maybe she likes you a “little bit.” There you have her. You speak fluent Sam. You know her prodigious appetites. Sam doesn’t like anything a little bit. She doesn’t eat a scoop of ice cream, she eats a carton.  She doesn’t watch a Girly Cow episode she watches marathons.  You are noting her tiny bites of food. They are not the giant shark bites that Sam uses when feeding.  These bites are nibbles, suggesting she is NOT Sam-normal. She would not be acting this way if she suddenly realized she thought you were just a swell guy, “There goes Freddie Benson, he’s okay I guess.” No, her level of tension indicates she is in the same crazy place you found yourself. 

And the wheels that have been spinning for three days suddenly grip pavement and launch you toward a conclusion. You see it. She can’t come to grips with it either! Why did that not occur to you? She felt crazy too. There is the sensation of puzzle pieces coming together with dazzling speed. You feel stress and fear evaporating like steam. Your inner Benson is smiling. The two of you are so alike. You both feel the same way.

Suddenly, after three days in some dark crater you are holding a rope and climbing out. Hand over hand, a blue sky gets bigger overhead with every pull.

Calmly you ask about the quesadilla, while you would like to try the food this is also a test. “Can I have one?”

“No!” she spits back, protecting her kill from nerdy scavengers who never have to safeguard their meals.

Okay. This is Sam.

Blonde Demon Sam.

Your Sam.

The Sam you have spent years learning. Your path is clear, well worn, you’ve done this many, many times, with meals and school work and schemes, and you have a script for this. You can dialogue with this person. You are a veteran of a thousand Sam campaigns. The fact that you lost almost all of them is irrelevant.

“Can we talk about the kiss?” you ask. You really do want to talk about The Kiss. You NEED to understand where she is at.

“Yeah, actually let’s never talk about it, all right?” she fires back. Okay, you have to sideline what you need, you are used to that with her. This Sam is on the run, you have to be cautious, Sam Puckett cornered is an explosive proposition, a honey badger with brilliant blue eyes and… Stop looking down her shirt!  Get your head into this. Choose the man you want to be.

She is cornered and scared, just like the night of the lock-in. And you feel a little ashamed of yourself. For three days you have thought about you, Freddie Benson. What this means to you. You should have been thinking of her, time to do the right thing, Fredifer.

“Sam,” you start to speak, to lean in, trying to project a safe, brotherly vibe. She turns with a glare that would slice a lesser man open at the gut and you are certain you hear the growl of some jungle predator. You draw your “Don’t kill me,” number seven inflection, the one with the slight exaggeration on the “oh” in don’t.

You pull back to a safer orbit and open a hailing frequency, “I was just gonna say, no matter what happened that night or what you’re feeling right now, I’m telling you,” You reach and touch her shoulder with a tender, supportive…

“Off.”  Her command is firm and filled with rows of teeth. You withdraw rather reluctantly. There was a time you would have checked to see if you were pulling back a bloody stump, but what matters now is helping her find a safe place. You will do whatever it takes.

You begin again from the safe orbit, you need her to know she is okay in your eyes, however she wants to play this, you will go along. That is what you do for her. You help her with homework, you pay her way, you support her, as friend or whatever, you have always put up with her madness, so you say this:

 “You’re not anymore mentally unstable than you have been your whole life.”

Okay, that won’t be finding its way into Bartlett’s Great Quotations anytime soon, but it throws Sam a rope in her own crater.

She turns and looks at you, measuring your words. You are sending every ounce of trustworthy Freddie energy you can muster. You want her to know that you accept her exactly as she is. In essence, what you said three nights ago: It’s cool.

“You really mean that?”  She asks.

“I do.”

She pauses, “K,” she sighs, then comes to some conclusion you can only guess at. “Let’s get outta here.”

“Good,” you say, and you mean it. This is no place for anyone.

You are coming to a deeper understanding of this girl who is your friend. Girlfriend? No, but you are going to figure this out. You are thinking about asking her on a date. The prospect of kissing her is a lot farther away. That may never happen again. You know you are feeling something but Sam may bury this forever. What you want may not matter at all.

You watch as she is dumps her food into a large black bag. She is selfish, abrasive and abusive. Do her positive traits outweigh her substantial flaws? She is the most complex human being you have ever met, yet you are going to ask her out.

Are you sure about this?

“Sure,” you say out loud with very little conviction.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conclusion

You are Freddie Benson and you are pretty sure you can see the future. In that future Sam Puckett is going to pretend that she never kissed you and that any warm feelings for you she has been closeting are going to be deeply buried in some subterranean, neutronium vault in her brain probably playing Slap Jack with all that rage she has for her missing father.

That is just fine with you. Earlier today you left room 107 thinking you were going to ask her on a date but as you both walked away from the conversation the idea seemed less and less likely, like a sequel to _Titanic._

You admit that the last few days have turned over some rocks in your own emotional acreage, but really, the idea of Sam and Freddie (Seddie?) getting together is just too ludicrous to explore. Sam and Freddie on a date would require some kind of referee. If you dated Sam your mother would have a cardiac event, an embolism or something terminal.  “Hi, thanks for coming to Marissa’s funeral service, this is Sam, my dating her killed my mother.”

The two of you are complete opposites despite all of the similarities you personally can enumerate. You want a serious relationship with someone like, no, not Carly, you’ve been down that road far enough, not Shannon, nice enough but no attraction on your end, not magical Malika, no way, no, you want, what, exactly?

Sam doesn’t have what you want. Freddie Benson’s Perfect Girlfriend (FBPG) will be very smart (like Sam) and beauty (like Sam’s) isn’t necessary but it would be a plus. With FBPG there will no fighting, no tricks, nothing physical that leaves anyone limping or requiring ibuprofen. FBPG will be creative (like Sam), strong willed (like Sam) and will make you laugh (like Sam does) and will challenge you to be a better man (like Sam does).

Uh huh. Why would any female with those qualifications want to be with you?

Okay, let’s try that again. You imagine a fantastic relationship wherein you and FBPG agree on everything, love the same movies, books, and software.  Maybe you disagree on something, but eventually the two of you come together cutely realizing that nothing is more important than the two of you. You will hold hands and go for long walks in golden sunshine which will always beam down except during moonlit walks when the temperature will be just right, likewise the caressing breeze will carry the fragrance of fresh flowers. When lemon scented rains fall you will run to shelter laughing. You’ll give her your jacket when she is cold and the two of you will share a special journey as you each discover who the other is. You will pick her up on Friday nights and double date with Carly and whoever Carly loves that week, and everyone will get along. She will admire you, respect your intelligence and be nice to your mother whom she will also admire and respect. Neither of you will have bad breath nor noxious emissions of any kind. Both of you will only sweat when appropriate. She will be like the girls at Galaxy Wars conventions who wear the costumes… No, not that so much.

Really?

You tell yourself Sam spent the entire conversation at the hospital basically telling you to drop it. Being in a couple takes two, and one half of your proposed couple doesn’t want to play. YOU aren’t even sure. That’s a binary without the zero or the one—it can’t happen.  

Here’s the thing. Sam Puckett is too much work. Who wants anything that passionate, er, heartfelt, er, intense, er, stressful? Yes, stressful, that’s the word.

You’re Freddie Benson and you’re afraid.  Sam is not like any other girl you have ever known.  You understand her, but that understanding comes from years of beatings, tricks and abuse. You have earned your knowledge of her. It did not come easy to your mind like most things. Sam is not easy. NEVER. She rejects authority, convention and rules. You live for doing the right thing, Sam dances to a tune you can’t hear, but you like the steps you see. She offers a door to places you can’t go without her.  

You reflect on all of this as you as you drive back to Troubled Waters with Spencer wearing fake boobs and a Pam Puckett wild pixie-bob wig. He and Gibby are discussing Gibby getting to try the boobs on the way back. You note how territorial Spencer is about them.  These two aren’t in for observation and Sam is?

The immediate problem is that Sam can’t leave the hospital without a parent or guardian to check her out. The four of you need to do _iCarly_ , tonight.  Spencer is going to sign Sam out by pretending to be her mom. So much is wrong with this plan you feel like you are stuck in some Dingo Channel show where the adults are all idiots. Fake boobs are one thing but fake ID is what is needed. 

Here is the future you see:  The plan to free Sam will tank and you will have to configure your gear to capture and stream from somewhere in the hospital. You have thrown all your equipment for doing the show into the trunk. You distract yourself from your new routine of only thinking about The Kiss by preparing to configure your PearPhone to handle the Internet traffic for the show. You don’t like that plan for handling any intense streaming so you will look into what kind of network feed the hospital has. Surely they will have security implemented that you have not considered.

You are always prepared; your mind is arguably your best feature. However, over the last few days, your mind has failed to secure a solution to The Kiss and everything that has surfaced because of it. A deep sadness (that has become your constant companion) unfolds in every direction, pressing down around your tech think. The gloom is paradoxically sunny and blonde with electric blue eyes. You are tired, scared and confused. Is this love? Why would anybody want this?

 

II

You are Freddie Benson and your predictions have all come true. Spencer’s disguise was blown not by rigorous security procedure but by a patient that recognized Spencer and outted him.  Everyone (with some persuasion) accepted your suggestion to shoot from this location. Patching into the hospital’s business cable feed was easy. You have Carly’s request for video chat readiness completed. You don’t remember anything about it in the script notes but so much has happened even your brain is maxed out at this point. You are ready for go-live and you have nothing left to distract you from the grim specter that claws and hisses at your door.

Your prediction about Sam was also accurate—sort of.  In the past she has helped you get gear set up. Her ability to perform set-up was one more indicator of just how smart she really is. Many people think of Sam as having no ambition or aptitude because her academics are for chiz, but you and Carly know and see a Sam Puckett that the world doesn’t. She reminds you of stories of geniuses who see no reason to work within the system and reject it. You admire her mind, her fierce spirit and maybe the reason you don’t pursue her is that you see her moving on from someone as unspectacular as you. Her twin sister Melanie is extraordinarily bright and an ultra-achiever. You know enough about twins to recognize those same traits must exist in Sam but they are refracted in wildly different ways. The Puckett twins would make a dynamite research paper.

She hasn’t gone back to pounding you, baiting you, it’s worse somehow, she is ignoring you. Every time you have looked at her she was looking at you and then hastily looking away.  What should you say to her? What is the right thing in this circumstance? Carly asked you earlier today if this was some new chapter in your lives. Yes, it is, you think and you don’t like it at all. Does the man you want to become get to cry?

Tonight, her helping you get things ready would be the perfect excuse to spend some time with you, but she does not.  You get the message she is sending. Whatever happened the night of the lock-in is not something Sam wants to factor into your lives. It’s just a glitch, an anomaly, an embarrassing moment that will make a funny story twenty years from now.

Or a very sad one.

 

III

 

You count off and the patients conclude the sequence.  One of them, Caleb, grabs airtime with some message from his dementia; you are thankful when he blends back into the crowd. Carly and Sam are totally into it, at least you think Carly is, you aren’t really watching her. You cannot take your eyes off Sam, funny, creative and bursting with talent, when she draws close to the camera your heart races faster. It is all you can do to swing the camera toward Gibby when he makes his entrance.  You are in a kind of functioning haze. You come back into focus when Carly says,

“Uhm, actually we’re gonna do somethin’ else first.”

Huh? You are again looking at Sam and it is clear from her reaction she doesn’t know what is going on either. Your spider sense begins to tingle.

Carly says, “Okay, so you fans of _iCarly_ who want to see Sam and Freddie get together…”

CHIZ!

Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz, Chiz.

You tell yourself that Carly is the heart of the three of you, you are the brain and Sam is the muscle, but you really wish Carly could get into a program that would break her of meddling in people’s romances. Isn’t there some medication with lots of warnings about side effects that would make Carly mind her own business? Is this some variation on the barn mating maneuver? You love Carly, at one time you mistook that for being in love, but at this moment you wish you had a stun ray, some _Galaxy Wars_ mind magic, “This is not the chat you want to use.”

You try to stop her, “Carly I don’t think it’s a…”

“Shush!”  Carly commands with the same tone she uses for “Gibby!” Then she continues, “Now the problem is, Sam thinks it’s insane for her to like Freddie.”

“‘Cause it is,” Sam ratifies to the camera, and that hurts more than you ever thought possible _._ You also note Sam’s face. You recognizethe weariness and the frustration with her best friend, but there is something else that lands in the pit of your stomach and takes root. She feels alone. So very alone.  That thing that took root less than a second ago starts to burn incandescently in your heart.

She deserves better.

“But we want to hear from you,” Carly says to the vast web audience.  Caleb interrupts again with some unamusing prattle about the future. The patients chatter and hum around you and you imagine the faithful viewers doing the same thing around the world.

As Caleb fades again Carly continues, “Now we want to hear from you, the fans of _iCarly_. So if you think Sam’s insane for liking Freddie, or not, just video chat us right now here at icarly dot com.”

The view finder is on Carly but your eyes are on Sam. She should be in the grip of her black fury but her only outward action is the exclamation: “Dude!” and it throbs with frustration. Something is happening inside that she does not know how to deal with. Carly is in speed meddle mode and cannot be stopped.

Carly dashes to the computer and engages the chat. The rapidity with which all of this works astounds you. Did she arrange this beforehand? Are the chat callers plants? How much of a scheme is this?

A young girl by the name of Wavy Becky comes on and advocates for something, a date, coupleness, some kid version of romance.  Has she thought about it for the hours you have? What does this child stranger know?

When she states that you are “hot” her creditability rating triples, and Carly says,

“Uhh, let’s not get carried away.”

WTF?  Stun ray. Definitely.

Goopy Gilbert is next. He is clearly living in a basement and he is invested in your lives for reasons you don’t want to even consider. Having Gilbert in your corner does not advance any cause and you aren’t even sure what your cause is anymore.

Carly translates the single word affirmation Gilbert shouts repeatedly into, “So you think Sam and Freddie should be together?” Briefly you imagine Carly sitting on a top of a mountain of skulls with great leathery bat wings stretching out of her back as she hurls blue bolts of force at you and Sam who tumble end over end down some ancient landscape.

You shake it off and look at Sam. She is using her incredible strength to fight an inner conflict she does not comprehend.  She is in some terrible space, in danger and struggling. You know what a fighter she is but it is not enough. Not against what she is fighting now. Your breathing is shallow, the blood pounding in your ears. You need to do something. This cannot continue.

Sam, looking spent, lost, and hopeless, says, “Okay look, I don’t care how many iCarly fans say I’m not insane for liking Freddie, I know that I’m craz…”

One way or another it ends here.

You cut her off, your voice too high because of nerves.

“Let’s take one more chat,” you suggest.

Sam protests but you insist on one more, as you pick up a Pear Pad and connect into the chat. Your stomach is charged with lightening bugs blinking and bouncing off your insides. You don’t have a speech for this, you can’t ad lib, but you do remember the speech you thought up the night of the lock-in:

“I know that it’s scary for you to put your feelings out there, because you never know if the person you like is gonna like you back, everyone feels that way, but you never know what might happen…”

You never got to finish that speech because Sam kissed you. This is how that speech was supposed to end.

“You never know what might happen. Take a chance. You taught me that being scared is okay, running away isn’t. Sam, any guy would be lucky to have you as a girlfriend.”

You take a breath and start down a road with no script, no preparation, you haven’t thought this through. For you, this is a recipe for doom. But looking at Sam, knowing how she feels right now, you step forward into the void, sure of nothing, following the distant sound of your beating heart.

You look into the Pear Pad, “Hey! It’s me, Freddie. So, uh, a lotta people have been talkin’ bout whether Sam and I should, y’know, go out with each other. And it’s like everyone’s wondering whether Sam is crazy for wanting to. But nobody asked me how I feel.”

“We talked about it,” she says. You are keenly aware of her place right now, she feels abandoned, adrift, betrayed by Carly’s good intentions, and you are sure she thinks you are setting her up for the Big Payback.

“No, **you** talked. You told me how **you** feel while you ate a quesadilla,”

“The quesadillas here are amazing,” she says to the camera.

You can’t help but feel amused by how her wonderful mind works. She makes you feel and think in ways no one else does. She is unique, one of a kind. Special. How can you make her know that with the same certainty? Earlier you told yourself Sam didn’t have what you want, but maybe she has what you need.

She is silent now, her luminous blue eyes regarding you. Maybe she hates you, but you know she trusts you, maybe more than anybody else in her life. You have the trust of someone who has learned repeatedly not to trust. You suddenly, clearly, see that you have been given something precious and sacred.

“Anyway, yeah, it’s important how Sam feels, but how I feel is important too,” she will blow any second now…

“Okay Benson we get it,” and the eruption of Mt. Puckett begins as you knew it had to.

You put the Pear Pad down, tech has taken you quite a distance but it can’t help you now. You approach her. Have you ever been this terrified before? You’ve dropped shields; there is no room for evasive maneuvers; at this range if she fires you will go down in flames and smoke that will linger for years.  This is on _iCarly_ , on the Internet where nothing dies.

“You want to humiliate me on the web in front of millions of people,”

Her words are coming from a coal black hole dug by countless rejections and disappointment. You shudder to think about what those cerulean eyes have seen, and how she has survived with so little help from anyone.  You want to change that. She deserves so much better.

The look on her face is one you have seen before; basic furious Sam, a look that is as familiar as your own.

“Go ahead and just do it, I don’t care,”

The fury bleeds out of her features as the space between you shrinks, fittingly only you can see the change to a perfect WTF face as she comprehends what you are doing and what is about to happen,  Because Sam has no internal governor she continues her angry outburst,

“Get back with me for all the mean things I’ve sa…

Then your lips press into hers. You feel her push back for just an instant before relaxing into the embrace, welcoming it in her own way.  As you close, you are positive you saw her eyes spark like exposed wires and a smile jump onto her face. The idea that she is happy because of something you did makes your heart pound. She is soft, more girl than you ever thought, so warm under your hands and… trembling? What is that about?  Her hair smells of apples and melon, her lips taste of gum and cheese quesadilla. In your incredibly crowded brain one thought glows and buzzes like neon on a midnight highway: _This is the right thing._

This kiss is yours. It wasn’t mutually negotiated on a fire escape, it wasn’t unleashed on you, you chose this one, no matter what happens in your life, on the day you die, so far from now, you will be able to say, “I kissed Sam Puckett,” and every time you say it, or think it, you will quiver. It is one of a handful of moments in your life that you will keep close, a rare gem that you would never trade.

You separate and you are aware of applause. You brace for her laughter, the slap, the cutting remark, you don’t know what she will do, but whatever it is, you’re okay with it. You made a move, and you didn’t run.

She looks at you, and you recognize all the doubt and fear and confusion crawling up inside her, they have been your companions for the last three days.

“You mean that?” she asks seriously, uncertain of what to believe. It comes from a cold, wounded place that feels undeserving, where babies cry but no one ever responds, and even then you see your beautiful, strong Sam trying one more time to believe, reaching out with trust. She is so amazing it catches in your throat.

You could put together some speech from pieces lying around after the last three days, some overblown Honors English thing about hope and angels and rewarded faith, but thinking didn’t really get you here, and Sam isn’t much for big talk. Your response is a simple “Mhh hmm.”

Of course that brain of yours can’t let go, and you have to sneak in something verbal:

“So I guess we’re both insane.”

You are Freddie Benson and you don’t feel insane. You feel scared, electrified, excited, hopeful, young—alive.

In love?

“So, now what?” she asks. It is a good question but one you don’t need to answer right now. That’s another story, for another time.

 

_“There is no reason not to follow your heart”_ \----Steve Jobs


End file.
